The course will be taught online over 3 full consecutive weekdays (0900 – 1515), with a mixture of live interactive lectures, seminars, and group work. The course is structured to introduce key concepts and then build on that foundation, and so participation in all sessions is necessary in order to benefit fully.

By the end of the course participants should be able to:

1. understand the development of empirical bioethics;
2. critically engage with key challenges involved in undertaking empirical bioethics research;
3. critically engage with key theoretical debates in empirical bioethics and understand their significance;
4. demonstrate awareness and understanding of a range of empirical bioethics methods and methodologies; and
5. apply critical methodological insight to their own work.

This course is intended as an introduction for anyone (at any career stage) who is beginning to use, or just wants to know more about, empirical bioethics and its methods.

This course will cover:

1. the rationale behind empirical bioethics;
2. structuring and planning an empirical bioethics research project;
3. literature reviews in empirical bioethics;
4. dialogical and consultative methods in empirical bioethics;
5. qualitative data collection in empirical bioethics;
6. qualitative data analysis in empirical bioethics; and
7. standards of practice in empirical bioethics.

The course director and lead tutor, Professor Jonathan Ives, has been working in empirical bioethics for nearly 20 years, and is established as one of the leading figures internationally in the field. He led a European consensus group on standards of practice in empirical bioethics, is lead editor of the CUP’s 'Empirical Bioethics: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives’, and is lead editor for the newly commissioned Routledge Handbook of Empirical Bioethics. He is an experienced educator, and has provided training and teaching internationally.

Other tutors will be drawn from the Centre for Ethics in Medicine, and have extensive experience in empirical bioethics research, including Professor Richard Huxtable and Dr Giles Birchley.

To make sure the course is suitable for you and you will benefit from attending, please ensure you meet the following prerequisites before booking:

Before booking this course, please make sure you read the information provided above about the target audience and prerequisites. It is important that you have access to the relevant IT resources needed for the course and meet the knowledge prerequisites to ensure you can get the most from the course.

Bookings are taken via our online booking system, for which you must register an account. To check if you are eligible for free or discounted courses please see our fees and voucher packs page. All bookings are subject to our terms & conditions, which can be read in full here.

For help and support with booking a course refer to our booking information page, FAQs or feel free to contact us directly. For available payment options please see: How to pay your short course fees.

Participants are granted access to our virtual learning platform (Blackboard) 1 to 2 weeks in advance of the course. This allows time for any pre-course work to be completed and to familiarise with the platform.

To gain the most from the course, we recommend that you attend in full and participate in all interactive components. We endeavour to record all live lecture sessions and upload these to the online learning environment within 24 hours. This allows course participants to review these sessions at leisure and revisit them multiple times. Please note that we do not record breakout sessions.

All course participants retain access to the online learning materials and recordings for 3 months after the course. 

University of Bristol staff and postgraduate students who do not wish to attend the full course may instead register for access to the 'Materials & Recordings' version of this course: Further information and bookings.

100% of attendees recommend this course*.
*Attendee feedback from March 2025.

Here is a sample of feedback from the last run of the course:

"The course involved group activities, and adequate time to raise questions and discuss about individual research works. This really helped to reinforce the theoretical learnings." – course feedback, March 2025

"I really enjoyed the course and I feel I am now much better equipped to engage in empirical bioethics research. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to gain feedback on the approach we planned to take for our project, and gained a lot of insight through the discussion on day three." – course feedback, March 2025

"The course provided adequate time for each participant to discuss their research work and get practical tips and suggestions to improve their research. The course promoted peer learning which was very useful considering it was diverse group." – course feedback, March 2025

"I really liked the group discussions and being able to ask specific questions and seek guidance. I also found it valuable to to [sic] have access to the materials for three months so that I can revise the material again before moving into the empirical stages of our project. I found the session on interviews/group work very informative, and in particular the guidance on how to design these based on the research question(s). Thank you." – course feedback, March 2025